The wall of silence and arrogance

Aug 10, 2010 Editorial

Michelle Obama travelled to Spain with her small daughter on a vacation that appeared to be somewhat more than a vacation because she met with Spanish royalty. She was accompanied by friends, and of course, the American Secret Service detail assigned to all influential people associated with the United States Presidency.
As the wife of the President she had no say in the presence of the security detail with whom she had to provide a schedule of her visits.
Immediately the American people (at least some of them) bristled at what they considered a waste of good money that could have gone to help Americans during this rough period when many are losing jobs and when the economy is slowing down once more.
They asked questions and they got answers. Their reporters investigated and found that some of the locations where Mrs. Obama stayed cost between US$400 and US$7,000 per night. They pried further and found that she and her friends paid their way.
But that did not appease the problems because the people of America looked at the cost of security that was borne by the country and they placed that figure at US$250,000.
All told that trip was insignificant in the eyes of those of us who have grown accustomed to the travels of our national leaders and the absence of any excuse or any idea of the expenditure. But the Americans place their leaders under the microscope. That country is a democracy. There was no blazing abuse of the media for seeking answers to every detail.
In recent times the local media have been asking questions and have been criticized for being anti-government and for seeking to create issues where there is none. The harsh reality is that people have a right to know, but it would seem that the national leaders have adopted the position that this should not be the case; that people should wait until they are told.
We have attempted to get answers to myriad questions about the operation of the state and get rebuffed at every turn. The hydro road project is just one of the instances. But even before this, queries about contracts, about the failure of the government to comment on certain expenditures, about the Supenaam stelling — all have been met with non-responses.
A government that does not see it fit to account to the people is one that is operating outside the pale. It is one that feels that it has no one to account to and that the people have a right to sit and wait until they are told anything, even if that narration is laced with untruths. In fact, to question what appear to be untruths is to invoke all manner of threats of sanctions.
We, at this newspaper, have been hauled before the courts for pointing out anomalies in certain costs of things acquired for contracts. The authorities refuse to inform us about the engineer’s estimates, they refuse to talk to us about details of the contract, they refuse to comment when the contracts result in substandard work, except to say that the contractor would be revisited.
It was President Bharrat Jagdeo who described the media as lazy and as lacking in capability to undertake investigative reporting. The truth is that most of the media houses operate on a shoe string and cannot afford the lawyers to fight off the most trivial of lawsuits.
Still fresh in our minds are the responses to a comment that the President spent millions of dollars on his overseas trips during the past few years. We were told that the figures were with the Ministry of Finance and when a Parliamentarian suggested that things were not right, the invective that followed the comment still reverberates.
Things such as information about the distribution of diplomatic passports become state secrets and we were told this. We are sometimes told that answers cannot be provided because investigations are still ongoing. We are further told that when corrupt practices are discovered people cannot be placed before the courts because the evidence is such that it cannot lead to criminal prosecution.
And because we are a placid people we accept so many things. We must wonder whether the American people, in a country with resources that we will never accumulate in four or five lifetimes, would have reacted in the same manner as we do.

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The wall of silence and arrogance

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